If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution
dal 15/11/2006 al 6/1/2007
Segnalato da
Alexandra Bachzetsis
Lies Vanborm
Bless
Kate Davis
Pascale Gatzen
Myrza de Muynck
Karl Holmqvist
Jutta Koether
Claudia & Julia Muller
Isabel Nolan
Paulina Olowska
Falke Pisano
Stefanie Seibold
Lucy Skaer
Frances Stark
Lily van der Stokker
Sue Tompkins
Haegue Yang
Fre'de'rique Bergholtz
Annie Fletcher
15/11/2006
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution
De Appel (old location), Amsterdam
Feminist Legacies and Potentials in Contemporary Art Practice. The aim is to explore how feminist thinking on all levels (social, artistic, political, theoretical, ideological or structural) may be important in our cultural life. The programme is articulated in an exhibition and a series of performances at De Appel, and a symposium at De Balie.
Feminist Legacies and Potentials in Contemporary Art Practice
Curated by Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher
As an agile and experimental curatorial platform, 'If I Can't Dance…' departs from a spirit of open questioning and enquiry with artists. This year it looks specifically at the legacies and potentials of feminism in relation to art today. Beginning with the quote of Emma Goldman: 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution' we are interested in the simultaneous critical and celebratory implications of this Lithuanian anarchist's statement. We suppose it pertains, in Goldman's case, to the search for (and the difficulty of finding) agency, or her own power as an individual woman despite her involvement in a collective quest for political change. The question for us is how we can consider such a desire now?
Developing 'If I Can’t Dance…' with De Appel allows us to articulate a historical context for this legacy very precisely. Established in 1975, this art centre has a rich history of showing experimental art for over thirty years. Amongst other things one can trace a very specific trajectory of performance art, which directly engaged with issues of sexuality and Western feminism in the late 70's under its first director Wies Smals. This is the first time that an episode of 'If I Can't Dance…' has been produced in the context of a contemporary art institution rather than in a performance venue, and it provides a situation from which to think about artistic legacy and indeed the curatorial history of De Appel itself (under Wies Smals, Saksia Bos and now Ann Demeester).
Working with Nell Donkers - the archivist from De Appel - we have excavated elements of this history. Archival documentation - presented within an installation by Stefanie Seibold - will be shown from artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Moniek Toebosch, Martha Wilson, Gina Pane and Joan Jonas. These practices provide an interesting comparison to the vernacular used by artists to think through ideas of agency, singularity and political empowerment today.
'If I Can't Dance…' doesn't offer a determined survey in the form of a single exhibition, rather we will work repeatedly with an expanding group of over thirty artists in a series of public platforms. To this end 'If I Can't Dance…' manifests itself in Amsterdam as an exhibition and a series of performances at De Appel, a symposium at De Balie, an 'insert' by the Otolith Group into the exhibition 'Just in Time' at the Stedelijk Museum, and with two evening events at Club 11.
Image: Kate Davis "I want to fun".
Opening november, 16 2006
De Appel
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, 10 - Amsterdam